Who and why imposed your lifestyle on you

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

David Cain, creator of the Raptitude blog, is back from a nine-month journey. The drastic change in lifestyle - freedom was replaced by work from nine to five - made him notice how many useless things he buys. We are trying to replace something important with things, to make up for the lack of freedom, and this only plays into the hands of multibillion-dollar corporations and big business. So did they not impose such a way of life on us?

So, I went back to the world of work again. I became a highly paid engineer again and finally felt like I was back to normal after a nine month journey.

Since I had lived in a completely different way on the trip, my sudden return to work from nine to five allowed me to notice some of the peculiarities of my behavior. When I returned to work, I became less careful with money. Do not waste it thoughtlessly, just a little faster and easier to part with them. Here's a small example: I started buying expensive coffee again, although it wasn't even nearly as good as New Zealand flat white and I couldn't enjoy it on the sun-drenched patio. When I was traveling, these purchases were spontaneous and I got much more pleasure from them.

I'm not talking about big purchases. I mean small, random and messy spending on things that don't add anything to my life.

Reflecting on the past, I noticed that I was always free to spend money when I was making good money. After spending nine months without constant cash injections, I did not give up such spending, but became a little more attentive to this phenomenon.

I think I am doing this because I feel a certain position in society. I am a highly paid professional, which takes me to the next level of spending. It's an interesting sense of power when you spend a couple of twenty without a second thought. It's great to experience this "dollar power" when you know you will get paid again soon.

There is nothing unusual in what I do. Everyone else is doing the same. In fact, I think I just returned to my normal consumer mind after living differently for a while.

One of the most surprising discoveries during the trip is that when traveling the world (including countries where life is very expensive) I spent less than at home.

I had much more free time, I visited beautiful corners of the planet, met new people right and left, I was calm and peaceful and had an unforgettable time. And by some miracle, it cost me less than my usual lifestyle and work from 9:00 to 17:00 in one of the most inexpensive cities in Canada.

This means that for the same dollars I received much less at home than when traveling. Why?

Culture of unnecessary

Here in the West, mindless consumption is cultivated by big business. Companies in all areas of production make huge profits from the habit of people not counting money. Therefore, they encourage everyone to love casual and insignificant spending.

In the documentary (The Corporation), a marketing psychologist talks about the methods she used to increase sales. Its staff conducted a study on the effect of children's whims on parents' desire to buy toys. They found that between 20 and 40% of purchases are made only because children start whining while coaxing their parents into buying a toy.

This is an example of how we spend millions of dollars on goods for which demand was artificially created.

You can manipulate the consumer into wanting and then buying your product. It's a game. Lucy Hughes, co-author of The Whining Factor Study

Big companies wouldn't make their millions just by advertising the real value of their products. They impose a culture of consumption on hundreds of millions of people who buy more of what they need and try to get rid of frustration with money.

We buy things to cheer ourselves up, to live no worse than our neighbors, to match our childhood ideas of what adult life should be like, to demonstrate our status, and for a bunch of other psychological reasons that have little to do with real needs.

Think how many things in your garage, closet, balcony or even closets you haven't used in the last year …

Why you really need a 40-hour work week

The main corporate tool to help maintain a culture of consumption is a 40-hour work week as a normal lifestyle. In such conditions, people are forced to rely only on evenings and weekends.

Such a schedule makes us spend more and faster money on entertainment and comfort, because our free time is very limited.

I returned to work just a few days ago, but already noticed that most of the activity has disappeared from my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditation and constant writing. The difference between these types of activities is that they require almost no money, but they take time.

Upon returning home, I had a lot of money, but not enough time, which is typical of the average North American.

While I was abroad, I would not hesitate to spend a day in a national park or spend a couple of hours reading a book on the beach. Now such a pastime is not even considered. Even one of these will take too much of my precious time off my weekend.

When I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is fitness. Exercise doesn't seem like a good idea to me after dinner, before going to bed, and after waking up either. And this is the only time I have on weekdays.

It seems that this problem has a simple solution: work less so you have more free time. I have already proved to myself that I can live a full life with less than now.

Unfortunately, in my field of activity, this is close to impossible. And in many other areas too. You work 40+ hours a week or you don't work at all.

All of my clients and contractors work in firms with standard working hours, so I can't ask them not to bother me after 1pm, even if I could convince my employer to make me a special schedule.

The eight-hour working day was established after the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, and it was a relief for factory workers with 14 and 16-hour days.

With the advancement of technology and methods, workers have learned to produce much more in less time. It would be logical to assume that this will lead to a reduction in the working day.

But an eight-hour day is too profitable for big business, not because people get more work done in eight hours (the average office worker can do less than three hours of really focused work in eight hours), but because it creates a society of happy consumers. …

If you create a lack of free time, people will pay much more for the comforts, pleasures, and other relief that can be bought. This makes them watch TV and advertisements. This only makes them ambitious at work.

The culture imposed on us makes us feel tired and dissatisfied with our own life, so that we constantly want things that we do not have. We buy so much because of a vague feeling that we are missing something, we have missed something.

The Western economy, especially in the United States, is built on satisfying addiction and waste. We spend to please ourselves, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to solve problems, to raise our status, and to relieve boredom.

Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying unnecessary things that do not affect people's lives in any way?

The economy would have fallen into a stupor and never recovered.

All of America's hyped problems, including obesity, depression, pollution, and corruption, are the price we paid to build and sustain the economy. For the American economy to be healthy, America must be unhealthy.

Healthy and happy people don't feel like they need more than they have. This means that they do not buy a bunch of unnecessary things, do not need so much expensive entertainment and do not watch a lot of ads.

The culture of the eight-hour day is the most powerful tool in big business for keeping people dissatisfied and forcing them to get rid of negativity through shopping.

You may have heard of Parkinson's Law. It is often used in relation to time: the more time you spend on something, the more time you spend on it. It's amazing how much you can do in 20 minutes if you only have 20 minutes. But if you devoted half a day to the same task, most likely, you will spend so much on it.

Many of us handle money this way. The more we earn, the more we spend. And not because we suddenly needed to buy something. We spend money simply because we can. In fact, it is very difficult for us to spend as before if we start earning more.

I think there is no need to avoid this ugly system and go to live in the forests. But we need to realize what big business wants from us. Corporations have created millions of ideal customers for decades and have succeeded. And if you are an ordinary person, your lifestyle was created long before you were born and imposed on you.

The ideal buyer is dissatisfied, but full of hope, not interested in serious personal development, is accustomed to TV, works full time, earns enough, indulges in pleasure in his spare time and just goes with the flow.